The Mansion in the Dark
by hotdogfish
Summary: Dared by his friends to explore the Pokemon Mansion in Celadon City after school one day, Timothy must brave the dark, the unknown, the mysterious, and getting grounded when he's done. Oneshot.


Sometimes, Timothy hated his friends, such as right now. Right now, he really hated them.

Sneaking into the Celadon Mansion has sounded like a good idea in class. Being dared to do it had been funny when they were hanging out on the school field at the end of the day. Now the sun had gone down and he was on the seventh floor out of eight. His friends were waiting outside for him to get back and he only had Driplette, his poliwag, for protection. Now that he was there, it was terrifying.

There were no lights turned on, so each doorway he peered through was full of shadows. Each step he took echoed along the quiet corridors. If that wasn't bad enough, every so often he saw a pair of glowing eyes ahead of him. Common sense told him it was probably a pokemon. Common sense hadn't seemed so common since he got past the second floor.

To make things worse, somewhere in the mansion lived an old lady. She was known to sometimes give away eevee to trainers, but he wasn't interested in that. He wasn't sure which scared him more, being found, kicked out, then the cops being called, or not finding anyone and having to explore the entire building.

His damp hands made twisting yet another doorknob difficult, but eventually he got it open. The door swung open with a quiet creak. He shone his flashlight into the room and decided he'd found another lounge. He closed it again and moved on to the next one.

Soon, he ran out of doors again, and stood facing another flight of stairs.

He hated the stairs. At least with opening doors he could slam it shut again. It would give him a minute to start his getaway. He had no such advantage with stairs. Anything that tried to chase him would be able to get down stairs just as quickly as he could. Though, if he managed to fall down the stairs, then he would get down them much faster, but it might take him a while to get much further.

He looked up the stairs and saw the pair of red, glowing eyes again. Driplette spat out some bubbles, but the eyes vanished again before the attack got close enough to hit.

He shook himself out, with a hand on Driplette's side so that she didn't fall off his shoulder, before slowly climbing the stairs. The last floor. Once he had looked around up there, he could finally leave.

This staircase was narrower than all the others, and the steps were wooden instead of stone. Hopefully that meant he was going up to an attic or something, instead of another floor of rooms.

At the top of the stairs was an open door. Stepping through, he saw that it wasn't as pitch black up here as it had been on the lower floors. In the far corner was a couple armchairs around a lit fireplace. Sitting in one of the chairs was an old woman, staring right at him.

The door slammed shut behind him.

He spun around and tried the doorknob, only to find that it was locked. He looked back at the woman, who now had two pokemon lying at her feet. One was light purple with a forked tail, and the other was black with glowing red eyes.

"So, I see you were brave enough to make it all the way up here." The old lady rasped, though she did sound pretty cheerful. "Come, sit. Come meet Dawn and Dusk."

The two pokemon pricked their ears at the mention of their names, but otherwise ignored both him and the old lady, more occupied with licking each other than paying attention to the two humans.

"Um, what are they?" He asked

"Dawn here," she pointed at the purple one, "is an espeon, and Dusk," she pointed at the black one, "is an umbreon. Come and sit and you can meet them."

He slowly walked to the ring of chairs, before sitting in the one closest to the door. The cushion was covered in a layer of purple and black fur.

"Are they eeveelutions?" He asked, as Dripplette slid down from his shoulder to his lap. "I've never heard of them before."

"Well, most people haven't. You need to let eevee evolve on its own time, not use one of those stones on it. Most people don't have the patience."

"My sister says the same kind of thing about her staryu, that she isn't going to force it to evolve." He said

The old lady nodded sagely, as though it was proof that she was right. Timothy hoped it wasn't proof that she was as nuts as his sister.

He glanced away from the old lady to see that the black one -umbreon- was watching him. His stare was unblinking, but much less creepy now that he could see the whole pokemon. The espeon was still ignoring him, watching a wicker basket close to the fire instead. He hadn't noticed it until then, but once he did, he saw that it was full of sleeping eevee pups.

"You want one?" The old lady asked, apparently he had been staring enough that she'd noticed.

"No. I'm not much of a trainer, and I already have Driplette here."

"Poli!" Driplette chirruped when he said her name.

"There's more to pokemon than just making them as strong as they can get, as quickly s you can manage." The old lady told him. "Oh, I almost forgot, would you like some tea?"

"No thank you. I should probably get back to my friends."

"Yes, those boys outside. Dawn has been watching them."

He looked around, but didn't see any windows that it could have looked out of.

"Well, come back and visit, you hear? Sometimes it's nice to just talk, and a young boy like yourself needs time to sit and relax after all your adventures."

"Sure." He replied, lying through his teeth so that he could hopefully get away from the lady with the spooky house.

"I'll have Dawn take you down. Wouldn't want you to get lost now, would we?" The old lady said with a wink.

"Uh..thank you!" He exclaimed, he'd never been teleported before and wondered what it felt like.

"Oh, and there's the matter of your friends."

"Er, yes?" He hoped she wasn't angry with them, when he left them, they weren't even on her property.

Instead of replying, the old lady stood up from her chair and shuffled over to the wicker basket. Timothy watched in a mixture of horror and awe as she pulled a pokeball out of a pocket and returned one of the eevee. She let go of the ball, and, instead of falling, a purple glow surrounded it and it floated towards him.

"You need to impress your friends, don't you? Bring this guy with you when you come and visit."

"No, ma'am, I really can't!" He protested.

The idea of giving away pokemon was always a nice once, but eevee were far too valuable to be given away, especially to the likes of him.

"Nonsense, of course you can. They're weaned already, but are still on puppy kibble. Just buy a small bag of from the pokemon section of the department store, and by the time the bag's finished, he'll be ready for adult food. Or you could just give him table scraps, he'd love that for sure." The old lady was chuckling to herself by the time she finished.

Before he could figure out whether to thank the old lady, or try and protest again, Dawn had walked over to him and started pulling on him with her psychic powers. When he didn't move, the espeon lifted both him and Driplette and floated them towards the door.

"Goodbye, my boy! Come back soon." The old lady called, as he floated through the now open door.

Apparently, Dawn didn't trust him enough to walk on his own, as he floated behind the walking espeon, all the way back down to the ground floor, and out the front door. Once they were outside, the espeon dropped him and he landed with a thump on the grass. Driplette landed beside him, none the worse for wear, and the pokeball was floated into his pocket.

"Thanks, Dawn." He stuttered, remembering his manners towards the psychic pokemon.

"Esp." Dawn replied, before trotting back inside the mansion, closing the front doors behind it.

So much for being teleported down.

He turned to his friends who were all watching from the fence with large eyes and open mouths.

"What was in that pokeball?!" One of them asked

He put a hand in his pocket and felt the ball inside.

"My new eevee." He replied.

"Man, you're gonna be so grounded."

Timothy stared at him in horror. He hadn't though of that.


End file.
